


Unsound

by Good_Evening



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, M/M, Mental Instability, Sibling Incest, The Void, Thor (marvel) has issues, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:48:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28580007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_Evening/pseuds/Good_Evening
Summary: It's 1870 and Loki's barely holding onto his personality. Not that he's weak--weak people don't generally get what they want. Thor is ever his brother's keeper, at least when Loki condescends to play along.-He spoke quickly, almost tripping over his tongue,“You dragged me back here like a satyr captures a maiden, only he is in his right mind; he knows what he is and why he does. But I can help you. I can help us both, only let me, brother, let me show you who we really are,”In a moment, he let go. Thor almost had him, had one arm pinned and was ready to ride it out until Loki came to his senses, but they flipped. A hand clasped his neck. Nails dug into his trachea and diverted his attention long enough that he failed to stop what happened next.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	Unsound

**Author's Note:**

> Loki remembers lives that may or may not have passed. Tenuously connected to "Do I Know You?"

It was never put to him in so many words, but as he grew older and slipped into a sphere of school, friends, and outsiders, Thor increasingly felt that there was something fundamentally wrong about his older brother. It wasn’t “wrong” like being “bad” was wrong, although Loki frequently got into trouble, deserved or otherwise.

Their mother called it “unsound.” As though he were merely one bird of a great flock, singing slightly off-key. In reality, it was a much more devastating characterization. One that haunted Thor and their family.

If you inspected any of the little wrongs individually, almost nothing would seem amiss. Loki was mischievous, like children are, had fits, like children do. However, what set him off might be very small, invisible to anyone but Thor (even so, he often failed to understand) and he had long since passed the age at which outbursts were even barely acceptable.

Loki was twenty-five and unmarried, with zero prospects despite his Fae beauty, his beguiling brilliance. He was a genius, that much was a given. Inaccessibly intelligent. Things made sense to him that were gibberish to some, enlightened to others, and frequently his unappreciated rants were tarnished by desperation and even rage at the fact that no one understood him. He saw things others didn’t, angles Thor never would have considered. In wondrous glimpses, he was unmistakably charming, witty, sagacious, but with enough exposure, he revealed to be changeable, irascible, demanding, and untrustworthy. His true thoughts and feelings were as opaque as his shadowed eyes. Nothing got past him, nothing penetrated him. Thor knew from experience the fear he held bottled inside, fear of things he couldn’t begin to comprehend. Not for nothing since Loki was always trying to convince him of some hidden danger stalking them.

It was as though he had one foot in this world and the other somewhere else, and it tortured him, mangled his ability to fit in, to make and keep friends despite how alluring he was. He was born as beautiful and unattainable as moonlight. Moonstruck. Something inexplicable guided--or misguided--his behavior.

Take now, for instance. 

It wasn’t quite as bad as when Thor was a child, when he hadn’t yet learned the words and actions that could soothe his brother at least to quietude, but Loki had seen… _something._ Something called _Proxima_ laughing at him from the lush shade of the public garden. Thor couldn’t see, and when he failed to lie well enough that he saw it too, when he failed to distract his attentions, Loki had a fit right there on the path. His color drained, eyes locked on the middle distance. Signs Thor well knew.

He guided him to a bench and his face tightened as his brother stumbled, shaking and half-delirious. They were concealed on one side by a large hydrangea, but anyone walking up the other path could easily see them. He loosened Loki’s cravat, the starch now limp and damp with cold sweat, and quietly reassured him as he descended into a guttural ramble. Loki clawed at his vest, eyes glittering with wretched anger.

“You bastard,” he whispered, “I never would have let go if I’d known this was where I’d end up. Back with your idiocy,”

“I’m sorry, brother.”

“And this backward world, even worse than the time I left. _Her._ At least that bitch didn’t follow you,” he spat.

Loki often cursed this woman, ‘Jane.’ Thor had long taken it as code for any woman he might bring home, and resolved in childhood to conceal his affections for anyone from Loki’s jealousy. Even schoolyard crushes were out of bounds. Loki had been banned from their academy grounds quite early on--there was no excuse for a seventeen-year-old boy to terrorize a twelve-year-old girl, however clever he thought himself for poisoning the tart Thor had gifted her. She never spoke to him again and Loki barely evaded imprisonment, even with Odin’s government position.

“Without her, we were happy,” he gulped, antagonizing himself. He looked up to Thor with veined eyes, red rims. “When we had them, our children were happier, _when you loved them._ Whether we took the throne or not and everything, everything was right no matter what form I took, how our, how we were. They were beautiful, and they’re gone now. We were happy.” He ground his teeth, repeated, _“When you loved us.”_

Thor could at least relate to that. He wanted nothing more than his brother’s happiness and no other world in which they were together could change that.

Loki almost stopped breathing, stiff. Thor took advantage and looped his hand around the back of his brother’s neck, pulling their foreheads together. He melted into him, gripped his wrist and panted, licked his lips.

“I’ll never forgive you for forgetting.” His face was feverish, eyes flickering rapidly, growing painful as he heaved, “You idiot, you buffoon, you--”

“I know, I’m sorry brother,” Thor murmured as he gently took hold of the hand trying to cut off his circulation, folding it into his own. Loki shoved down a sob and pushed at him as he was drawn in by powerful arms.

“You have no idea what it’s like in that darkness, how time fails you, how many worlds slip by. I’ve seen your face from every angle, watched you let me fall, watched you cry, scream, laugh, savor it. There are places where we’re… where things are as they should be, not this,” his tone rose into gasping. He grappled with the hand holding him until Thor released his neck and easily manacled him with a fist.

Loki froze. He leant in close and smirked fiendishly.

“Some things never change. You always did like to have me at your mercy, brother.”

Thor inhaled. So it was this Loki, now.

“You know that’s not true.”

“I’ve seen sides of you you’d never imagine--sides _I’d_ never imagined, no one could, not with how _perfect_ ,” his voice trembled with honesty, with loathing, “how beautiful you are to everyone, no. I’ve seen what lies underneath. You can’t fool me, not that anyone would ever listen to or trust what I’ve to say, and just think, you could probably get away with exactly that, all those awful things you’ve thought about me right here in this park and even were I to scream and grab at the legs of passersby, none would see anything amiss.” Crying did not suit him like shouting, Thor thought, at once grateful that they could easily hide his fit and devastated by the heat of his tears, the choke in his voice.

“Loki, I have not thought ill of you a day in my life.”

“In _this_ one, you may try your hardest to convince me, but a Thor is a Thor is a Thor. Why don’t you prove it to me, hmm? Prove how better you are.”

Thor grunted, “I do not know what that means. I would never harm you, as you imply, and it costs me nothing to refrain.”

“Darling brother,” Loki whispered low in his ear, “you’re harming me, now. Don’t you see the pretty bruises you’ve made?”

Thor looked down and flushed. His wrists were darkened, the pale skin and thin bones a testament to Loki’s sickness: contusions, his confinement. He released him with a sputtering apology and clenched his fists in his lap, failing to conceal how they shook as a laugh pierced him, high with tears and mockery. It dissolved into tiny, silent hitches on the border of insanity.

“It’s alright, brother,” he wheedled, “I know how you feel, how it feels to have someone at your mercy. Wouldn’t you like to feel it again?” He crept closer, lips brushing his ear. “You know what it’s like to truly hold me down, our parents would not have bestowed the key to my pretty cell on anyone without experience, in this life or any other.”

Thor stood and Loki fell into the cold seat of the bench, twisting to hide his face in his arms as his back shook.

“Brother,” Thor said thinly, “it is time I took you home. We promised mother to have you back within the hour.”

All was quiet. He almost thought the fit was over, since Loki often exhausted himself in such states to the point of speechlessness and sleep, but his brother turned on him with an expression so full of longing, rage, and despair, Thor almost took a step back. Never a good move, giving ground to Loki.

“Ah, yes. Back to the prison, my faithful guard. The Einherjar have nothing on you.”

Another reference beyond his grasp, delivered as acidly as ever.

And yet he smoothed back his hair with hands as sure as he’d done it a thousand years, and tied his cravat perfectly, a creature achingly delicate and dazzling and so cleverly concealing the tempest lurking beneath that veneer of elegance. Loki was always dressed to the nines. With features like Snow White, he was undeniably popular with women in nearly any setting, that is, until he had one of his turns.

As blinding as his beauty was, years of confinement had diminished him. He only bathed when Thor prepared the water, himself, and stood in the room to keep watch in case he tried anything. The lock had long been removed. He shaved him; the cupboard was chained shut and stored everything remotely sharp. The water would often go cold, something Loki claimed to prefer even when Dr. Heimdall insisted that his corporeal health could not take the strain. It wasn't as if Thor could simply fetch more water. Even if he stood to stretch his legs, however relaxed or asleep Loki seemed, his hand would latch onto his trousers, eyes sunken and wide. _Don't,_ he would say. _Don't._ As if he didn’t want to do what Thor knew he would, left alone. Loki was imprisoned by countless walls.

Thor would sit on command, longing to see that contented expression return to his brother's face. Despite his efforts at propriety, they more often than not wound up with Loki dozing half in his lap as he combed oil into his hair or massaged his scalp, feeling the anger and fear in him sink as though to the bottom of the tub. It was difficult to resist any of his requests when there was so little in his life over which he had dominion. He deserved all Thor could give, and still, it would never be enough.

Skin too white. Body too slender, too thin--waifish. A wisp. Beyond his fears and threats, the ghosts he saw, Loki was, himself, more a ghost than any found in a fairytale. Haunting a single room. Possessing a loved one.

Unquestionably unhappy.

Thor thought with profound sorrow that if not for the deep red circling his eyes, Loki's madness may have gone unnoticed, and they could almost have pretended everything was normal. A walk in the park, tea with their mother, then perhaps a show. A pub and a night of carousing as brothers are meant to enjoy. Loki claimed he had no such desires, but Thor pined for it. Dreamed of it. This had to be enough, much as it pained him, and he tried to forget the lives Loki could have lived, the relationship they could have had if he could be left alone. As it stood, he knew no other Loki than one that needed his protection, his attention and love. Around this, all his dreams coalesced: his center was their connection. However he acted out, Loki needed him. That was all Thor needed. That is unconditional love. That is what he would give, however little it satisfied his prisoner, in the end.

_How better._

-

“Loki lies because Loki lies,” his father told him emptily, tired of the words, the speech. They sat in the back garden. The kitchen window was open and Frigga and Loki could likely hear their conversation, but it was an old one, and she’d given a version of it to Thor since they first conceded he was the only one who could stomach--and interpret--Loki’s lies.

The most recent, in order, being:

  1. Thor was only his half-brother because
  2. Odin had secretly mated with a woman on an expedition in his army days, who tragically died, and
  3. Loki so reminded him of his dead mother that the only reason for his confinement was his father (and now Thor) kept him as a catamite.



That night, Thor had turned the lock on their door with finality, and the obscure fantasy that his brother’s mind could be opened by his touch. Sorted. Made whole.

“His illness, it’s not uncommon,” he tried, “and Dr. Heimdall says he’s unlikely to worsen.”

“That means only that he is at his worst.” Odin sipped his tea, the fragrance of whiskey leaden in the garden air. “Your brother may never heal,” he said, not only as though Loki was _wounded,_ but somehow simply Thor’s brother and not his own son. “It is as you’ve said: there is no better medicine for him than your presence, and we cannot keep you here forever. You must go to school, you must have a career, and you must marry. You cannot give us grandchildren when condemned to watch over a lunatic.” Odin stopped. Thor’s anger was palpable, spiteful. He sighed as Frigga carried two more cups to the patio and seated herself between them. Thor accepted his with a numb hand, securing the key in his vest pocket with a lingering touch. Loki remained in the kitchen, gripping the sink with his eyes closed.

The fact that their parents so brazenly abandoned him for this conversation spoke volumes of what they really thought. What would he do, Thor thought with trained panic and frustration. He couldn't escape them to rescue Loki, were he to attempt any mischief. Locking the back doors again, making Thor climb in through the window to rip the knife out of his hand. He almost sprinted from the patio before he remembered everything sharp was locked up, down here, too. The scars on his brother's wrist spoke to that.

Twice.

“Your teachers said your exams went well,” Frigga remarked. It was not a change of subject. “Especially if you were to enter a military academy, they say there is nothing keeping you away but the distance.”

True. His father’s alma mater was too far from home for him to commute every day. Odin agreed,

“Dormitory life will suit you. You make friends easily, and Volstagg and Hogun have been waiting for you to join since you first bested them at boxing. You’ve a bright future, my boy.”

“I will not go,” Thor stated simply.

It was an old fight, old enough that Odin did not rebuke him for his ungratefulness, his insolence. He didn’t argue or complain, only sipped his tea and waited for his wife to fail this argument on her own terms. They’d played this game with their golden son for years.

“Loki would do well to have some time to himself.”

Loki was locked in his room with their mother every hour of the day when Thor was gone, and once he passed adolescence, they rarely spoke. He had no life, apart from Thor. Loki had nothing but time to himself.

“I will not leave without him.” He set down his cup on the table. “You said that our uncle could host us, it’s not a long walk.”

Odin grunted, “Out of the question.” Thor stared at his feet. “Not only have they banned _him_ from contacting their daughter, his wife still demands an apology before we can step foot in their house. That is not Loki’s strong suit, if anything is.” Bearing Odin’s criticism of his brother was not Thor’s strong suit either, the constant need to defend him, to remind him of his talents always at the ready, but many of the accusations were true, and to defend him could only have provoked his father’s temper.

A dish shattered, the sound echoing off the kitchen floor. Frigga closed her eyes and inhaled, her face relaxing into gentle neutrality, and she quietly excused herself.

Loki had spoiled the question of an engagement between Thor and their cousin. It had been something of a family joke, teasing, more a prognostication than matchmaking. He and Jarnsaxa were thick as thieves in grammar school. Her bright eyes and dark hair, her temper and independence so close to that of his most important person, it was uncanny. Perhaps it was the resemblance to which Loki took offense, or that she was one of few girls unintimidated by his moods. Once the rumor about their relationship hardened into certainty, Loki congratulated her on wooing his brother, (already damning words, directed toward a lady) and offered a gift. A beautiful silk scarf he must have stolen, since his allowance had been cut off for such mischief at an early age.

Inside, carefully wrapped, was a dead rat with its head cut off, and a beautifully-penned note about losing her maidenhead. This, to a fifteen-year-old girl. He was nineteen. Odin finally confined him to the house unless Thor had permission to take him out. Thus, they were revealed as each other’s birthright. Without Loki, Thor had no purpose, and without Thor, Loki would be in a sanitorium.

Frigga returned from the kitchen without her son.

“There will be no one to care for him,” Thor whispered. She stroked his shoulder, a sign to look at her.

“There are plenty of places where he could flourish,” she lied sweetly. Thor might never see him again if they sent him where they’d talked about, before. Not to mention the barbaric treatments they casually floated as though they weren’t torture.

“I will not leave him.”

Odin stood without a word and wandered into the garden. Thor waited in the gathering darkness for the maid to ask him to bring Loki his cutlery. It was not safe for her, otherwise.

-

“I heard what they said,” Loki clipped. Thor set his tray on their little table and plopped himself on the settee, rubbing his face and preparing for an argument more a siege than a fight. “Who could have known your love for me extended so far, they must be so proud of the son who resembles them. A military academy. I hope wherever they send me is half as lenient.” The cushions dipped. Loki examined his supper, sniffing with mild distaste, and leant into his younger brother with his head on his shoulder. He played idly with Thor’s collar, loosening the first button. There was hardly a moment he wouldn't take advantage of their closeness, as though Thor were his only tether to the Earth.

“Not tonight, please,” Thor murmured, pressing on his eyes until green erupted from the darkness like aurorae, like an omen. What could he do? What could be done with his brother?

Loki paused.

He returned to his meal with perfect manners, allowing the silence as long as Thor remained pressed against his side, (or rather permitted him pressing) and once he ate enough to convince him he would not starve, Thor’s hands dropped. There hung between them a strangely mutual grief. On Loki’s part, perhaps tinged with bitterness, but there was a sad sort of wonder, an expression of honest disappointment. Thor shook his head.

“I will not leave you,” he declared for the thousandth time. Loki huffed, a brief smile clouding his face again with insincerity.

_“For better or for worse. In sickness and in health,”_

“Not tonight,” he said again, but he didn’t pull away.

Summer reached covetously for the twilight hours, and it was not until ten that Thor realized he should light a lamp, help him to bed, and tend to himself. Loki interpreted his thoughts easily, a sharp mind reader, as always.

“Don’t bother,” he hummed. “I will put myself to bed. You’re tired.”

One of the few, lucid moments he put Thor’s needs above his own but not without an ulterior motive, no, never. Thor was sure. In the morning, Loki would not be able to hide his usual self, his renewed glee at having his brother tied to him for the rest of his life, and yet Thor knew as well as the rest of the family that beneath his games, his somehow teasing and serious threats, there was something much darker, possessed. Desperate for him. It might be said that there was no Loki without Thor, in the utmost physical sense. His self-directed threats had been continuous and often graphic, regardless of the company.

The truth of it is that there is no future but this, no other place Thor would be.

The truth of it is, there is no Thor without Loki.

-

If he’d had the wisdom to look back on Loki’s actions with perspective on how his moods changed, what triggered and unmasked one of his many faces, Thor might have seen all this much sooner.

His first kiss was not Sif. Not really. They were nine and she wallopped him afterward so it couldn’t have counted. Loki, fourteen, had been nakedly pleased to see Thor so frightened of women, and welcomed him into greedy arms with a light yet devious scolding that he needed no one but his dearest elder brother. Thor hadn't cried after Sif punched him, but that did the trick.

Emphasis on "trick."

No, to understand the unfortunate context into which Thor was born, one has to assume it was in his cradle--a fact Thor avoided well even once his first “proper” kiss was stolen. Of course it was Loki. It was _that_ Loki. For the very first kiss in Thor’s life, he stood over his bassinet, almost five years old and wondering at that little bundle Frigga called “brother,” that swaddled mess of red cheeks and puffs of blond hair Odin proudly named “Thor,” after his lineage. They stood by the cradle, immersed in golden morning light. Odin reached for his hand as he warily approached. Frigga reverently stroked Thor’s face, a silent lesson in how to handle him as she beckoned their eldest son to meet his brother.

Loki, as he explained throughout Thor’s life, had never been happier than in that moment. That was his fulfillment, his eons-long aspiration. They were together again and they would _never_ be apart. So with the solemn wonder of a pilgrim approaching a relic, little Loki had spread his palm over his brother’s little cheek, and kissed him fully on the lips. It was the beginning of his madness, Thor was sure, and he hated himself for it.

At the time, their parents had laughed. They had no idea that their first son, the one Odin would effectively disown for his defects, understood the full intimacy of that act, and when the boys were a little older, Thor toddling and Loki attending school, Loki would hold him by the back of the neck to pull him into his kisses. Thor would giggle and stare up, ignorant of the force of despair malignant in Loki’s searching eyes.

Their parents put a stop to the kisses when Loki made the transition from short pants to suits, but the gesture remained. It evolved.

Once he discovered Thor scrubbing shamefully at his sheets, twelve and mortified and red as he’d been in the cradle, all bets were off. This Loki was born. Or, to be more accurate, unleashed. Maybe it had been his greatest lie: hiding the odious extent of these feelings for his own brother from infancy well into his own adolescence. At the point of revelation, it wasn’t as if their parents could object because ultimately, with his frail, kept-boy body, Thor could well protect himself against his advances. “Delayed” their affection, as Loki put it. Thor grew stronger, Loki more breathless after their wrestling as he was cornered after insulting guests: Thor learned how to get him in their room without bruising his translucent skin, held him back, pinned him _down_ and averted his eyes from the amusement and desire on his brother’s face _._ Only stolen kisses now.

Thor wiped his mouth clean after each fight and Loki, another Loki, always covered his eyes and laughed. When the version who pursued him was denied, another appeared to make it all seem like a joke.

Loki lied, because Loki lied.

-

It wasn’t that Thor always fell for it, since Loki seemed to lie whenever it suited him, even if proof to the contrary stood between them as clear as daylight. It was that someone had to believe in him unerringly to get anywhere with him, to play his games and remain supportive despite his deceit. It could be lying about something small, like whether Thor had food in his beard, or something larger. Like sneaking out unsupervised. Like having to chase him through the dark city streets wearing only pyjamas under a great coat, twisting his arm to drag him back into the house while clasping a hand tight over his mouth to keep their parents from waking to his manic laughter, no. That was not an attempt to escape. It was merely another game.

“What a lovely walk,” Loki panted after Thor threw him on the bed. “So kind of you to take me out this late especially after what you did to me, this afternoon. The night air does me such good.”

“Of course,” Thor replied, dripping sweat and stripping off his coat, “only next time perhaps we might bring a picnic.”

Loki laughed at him as he fell onto the settee. Thor tilted his head over the side and solemnly counted the bars on the window as he had, hundreds of times, wondering how he had managed to escape when the door was kept locked day and night, and one of two keys was in his possession. Of course, it wasn't enough that Loki should try to escape simply to be free. The game had begun when he tossed pebbles at their window from the street below, walking casually away when his brother's sleep-dulled face appeared in the pane. He'd only broken into a run when the front door shut.

Thor had quickly learned to do so quietly, if only to avoid condemnation of his mistakes. Odin and Frigga never confronted him about it but they must have known. On the few occasions he left the door open, Frigga must have closed it for him, because when Thor finally muscled his escapee back into their room, there would always be a tray of snacks as though they were still boys, hungry after a game of tag.

Their parents had given up. Loki was practically magical. He might have lived under their roof, but in all but name, it was Thor’s kingdom. He was the one to keep the dragon from burning it down.

(Arson was an issue almost from the moment Loki could hold a candle.)

Acting as his keeper was an honor Thor took neither lightly nor with terrible dread. It was more than duty. Unlike the rest of the world, he had the distinct privilege of witnessing his brother's brightest moments, his sincere curiosity, the strange thrum of the bond between them--he was in love with his happiness, a dangerous admission. He enjoyed his brother’s company on a level he couldn’t begin to explain, if asked. It was true that he frequently feared for Loki’s safety, and sworn secretly that if he ever did marry, (unlikely, he'd told their stoic parents) he would move him into whatever home life afforded him (a confession they took equally stoically). They were still brothers. But it was not without a degree of selfishness that Thor imagined keeping him forcibly tied to him, although he locked those thoughts away as surely as Loki might be locked in the attic of his future home while his pretty Jane Eyre drifted innocently through what rooms she was permitted. The thoughts were a vicious cycle. The fact of their relation was always on his mind, for better or worse.

Thus, the only lie to leave his brother’s lips that Thor ever challenged was that which stung the worst. However often it pleased or tormented Loki to deny it, Thor always asserted that they were brothers. Nothing could change that. No faerie or demon, not God, Himself could come between them. Thor was his brother, like it or not. And today, Loki did _not_.

He slowly removed his clothes as Thor’s breath slowed and he braced himself, the wavering gaslight from the street outside leeching his bronze skin sallow. From the corner of his eye, he watched his brother undress.

_Lord, not this._

“Thor.”

If the eyes are covered, it’s gone. Object permanence is a scam. If only he could disappear behind the dressing screen and Loki would stop looking for him, but all he could do was hide under his forearm and keep as still as possible. That is, until the floor creaked, and a steady weight lowered onto his lap.

“Thor, please,” he whispered. Thor knew exactly that tone, that heat, the look in his eyes despite how his arm was now glued to his face. Loki shifted and sighed prettily. He tensed beneath him at the sound. He might have cracked a tooth.

On the same day he congratulated Thor on reaching manhood, this Loki emerged.

“Brother, it’s late, go to bed.”

“Do not call me that,” he returned sharply. He should have been more aware that Thor couldn’t exactly call him anything else, at least not warmly, but Loki rarely left clues to betray his thinking.

His thighs shifted, slithering closer in the cold.

_Naked. He’s naked._

He knew this but the thought was numbing, as was Loki’s voice as it broke, low in the gloom, “Please, Thor, look at me, it’s been so long since you’ve looked at me.” Who could resist a show of weakness from the predator that’s cornered them? And yet even as he pulled and clawed at Thor’s arm to receive the affirmation that was his God-given right as the man under his care, Thor did not feel attacked. He felt his weight mold around his lap. This was not a panther with its claws gleaming, this was his older brother, now suddenly smaller than him.

Thor loved Loki’s weakness because it made him lean into his own, if that’s the healthy view. It wasn’t a long jump to other points of interest, which only rendered it more repulsive. Closer, now. He’d given up on the arm and instead raked his hand into Thor’s shirt while the other groped down the seam of his crotch. Thor scrambled and caught each wrist, quick as a viper, almost blind in the dark except for the light that caught Loki’s eyes, sharp and bitter and needy. Loki laughed.

“You’re always so proper.” He ground down and Thor jolted. “At least I know there is some honesty beneath that careful face.”

Thor breathed heavily, bathed in the mixed scents of their sweat. He never knew what to do when this Loki charged in, this one that denied their relation but craved intimacy, a version of himself that demanded Thor’s affection and validation more than any other perhaps purely because his conviction was so fantastical, so obscene, that he could never receive what he felt he was owed. In the mind of this Loki, so he had revealed pleadingly to Thor, they were husbands. Rulers of their own kingdom so none would question the depravity of their marriage. Neither Thor's initial balking at his casual dismissal of incest nor the threat of heavy labor fazed him, as the laws of England so rarely penetrated Loki’s imaginings. To him, they were kings, spouses and equals.

Thor had dreamt of it, before: Loki atop him, under him, in strange beds and black forests and a land of ice and snow. Some decadent part of him agreed with Loki's "husband" delusion, the palace life, the sureness of their bond, and he dreamt of it whenever they had a night like this. He saw them curled tight on their sides as he moved his hips languidly in the morning sun and shivered when his brother, consort, grasped desperately in the lock of his embrace.

He’d nearly vomited as he hid his sheets, that first morning after, but that was long ago. The plot was carefully forgotten, although certain details emerged in a kind of a sick nostalgia whenever Loki did this. Learning to ignore certain things was protocol for the Victorian era, even if they remained in practice behind closed doors, as Loki so avidly tried.

“You were never so cold to me.” He kept himself steady as Loki laid his head on his chest, his hold stifling. “On summer nights after feasts, you'd bring mead to the garden and we would lie beneath Idunn’s tree to watch the stars as I shielded us from Heimdall’s gaze, at least until it was announced… it did take a bit for everyone to get used to the idea.” He chuckled, and then pulled at his shirt with a crack in his voice. “I remember their faces when we said our vows, and you told me to look only at you. You told me you loved me.” Loki clutched the fabric in his fist like the tether connecting him to this world and Thor’s heart twisted and panged. He tried so carefully to play along.

“I do love you, you know that.”

Loki smiled softly, falsely.

“And yet you do not touch me. We're finally together after so long, stuck in this awful place and you’re all I have.” Again, his hand crept toward Thor’s waist. Thor grabbed it swiftly, attempted to parlay it into holding it to his heart--the closest concession he could make with ease--but Loki would have none of it. His face screwed up with indignation, desolation. “After all I’ve done, you truly must hate me. I’ve been so cruel to you, in so many of our lives,”

“No, brother--”

“ **DON’T call me that!** ” Loki screamed mostly into his palm, and Thor praised himself for how his reflexes had improved over the years. “I am not only that,” he finished softly.

“Calm yourself, I’m here.”

Frustrated tears welled without spilling. He turned his face into Thor’s hand, laying gentle kisses that had never failed to spark deep unease no matter how well Thor had learned to keep up this façade, one of many tailored to each of his personalities.

As many Lokis as there were, were Thors. He got at least that right with his "multiverse" theory. This was Thor's least favorite personality to deal with: one impossible to fully appease no matter how he longed for his happiness, a Loki desperate to please him toward the impossible wish of reciprocation. Simultaneously the most likely to obey and to cross boundaries, but then Loki had always been an exceptional contrarian. Deceptive. Delusional. Anguish incarnate.

The first time their parents had caught them in this position, they had the servants tie him to his bed, locked in his room for days, and Thor had to plead with them not to call the doctor after he’d told them it was delirium from a fever. The second, they’d meant to institutionalize him. That was the day Thor was burdened with the key and his brother’s welfare. Loki very credibly threatened to kill himself, shouted that he’d rather burn in hell than leave his family (meaning Thor and, minutely, Frigga-- _expressly_ not their father). Odin was tired of it. He was tired, and Frigga could hardly handle Loki on her own. Since then, he had not held another knife to his throat, nor had he ever left Thor’s reach more than to tease him. It was not propriety, Christian behavior, or even the laws of the kingdom that he respected, but this, at least, he understood. As long as Thor was his, something made sense. Life had meaning.

Ownership of each other, Thor could understand. Unfortunate that Loki’s thoughts sometimes confounded their connection for a physical one, but nothing he couldn’t correct by holding the line and locking the door, the very reasons for which he’d been given the key.

Only, his legs wouldn’t move.

Blood still thrummed in his ears from the chase, from _hunting_ and _capturing_ Loki and those connotations sparked something in him like remembering that very old dream. When their eyes met, Loki shifted again. Their connection ran deeper than Thor could admit. In that way, Loki was at least half-right.

“Interesting that you have me in this state and yet I’m the one on top. Not your typical style, _brother.”_

Another switch. Perhaps the other Loki would have been easier to handle, since Thor’s denial of his passions often brought him to a silent brood which, if painful to witness his tears, at least exhausted him enough that he could be put to bed before long. This version was decidedly more ornery, vexatious, even vicious. He spread his thighs wide and leaned back. The exertion of the chase had dampened his hair and it hung in loose curls, a dark frame for a white face and chest that glowed in the weak gaslight. Spite glittered in his eyes. Below, his lips were bitten, red, and plush, his wrists were bruised in their own tableau of colors and latched, again, under Thor’s hand. He was a fallen angel, beautifully painted and debauched, and he was increasingly aware of the effect he had on his younger brother.

“Time for bed,” Thor whispered tersely.

“Mmm, tuck me in, won’t you?”

Thor stood in a second, meaning to twist him back on the settee, but Loki tied his legs around him and hung from his waist, freed hands now tangled in his hair, yanking at the back of his neck. He was too light. He was too dark.

“That’s more like it!" He laughed breathlessly.

They struggled, Thor still trying to be as quiet as possible with their parents down the hall, but when it was clear Loki would not dislodge without absolute force, he threw them both down on the bed, thumping the wall loud enough to make him wince. Loki bared his neck with a short, high moan.

He pushed up into Thor’s hips, their erections sliding.

“Don’t,” Thor said, mortified. Loki grinned.

He thrust up and pulled at Thor’s hair as he jerked back and shoved at his chest. The fight grew dirtier: one hand released his head while the other dove for his pyjamas, slipping them down off his hips, and with the angle of his attempted escape freeing him from the heat of his brother's sex, they caught the head of his erection. It bobbed heavily as Loki bared it.

 _“_ ** _Don’t_** _,"_ Thor growled, but he was losing it.

“You hate this, don’t you?” Loki giggled. “You hate to touch me and yet you’d kill another for doing so because you want _this.”_ He thrust up and Thor moaned, back curling. “And yet you won’t admit it. Oh, all that righteous _self-loathing_ , just give it up, brother, my keeper. You have no secrets from me. I have seen your every face, desire, despair.” His eyes flashed dark, challenging, and he tilted his chin up to bare his neck. “That’s why you chased me as you did, why you grabbed me and held your hand across my mouth to silence me in our parents' house. Or have you already forgotten that, too?”

“Loki, enough.”

He spoke quickly, almost tripping over his tongue, “You dragged me back here like a satyr captures a maiden, only he is in his right mind; he knows what he is and why he does. But I can help you. I can help us both, only let me, brother, _let me show you who we really are.”_

In a moment, he let go. Thor almost had him, had one arm pinned and was ready to ride it out until Loki came to his senses, but they flipped. A hand clasped his neck. Nails dug into his trachea and diverted his attention long enough that he failed to stop what happened next.

“I planned such a lovely evening for us. When you went to fetch our dinner before our little walk.” He licked his lips. “I took care of myself, I knew you’d, _oh,_ you’d be ready for me after chasing me down. You’re a born hunter, aren’t you.”

Thor froze.

Loki hovered over him. His cock pressed up against his arse, warm and wet and slowly sliding up and in. He choked as he slowly seated himself, chest heaving wildly, a ghastly, self-satisfied smile scarring his face.

“Norns! Ah, what a cock they gave you.” He gulped and lifted himself an inch, sank further down. “Almost too big, bigger than I remember, certainly.” Thor grasped for any moment in their childhood where Loki had taken advantage of him and found nothing. The creature above him had long since fallen back in physical stature. Every limb shook, sweat pouring off his flushed chest. “That's right, every part of you, every, _nnh."_ He slumped down further, trying and failing to brace himself for the last few inches. "You were always an overachiever.”

Thor did not know why he let this happen. If he voiced it that way, Loki would tell him that he did, and exactly what it was.

 _“Brother,”_ he sighed as he lifted himself again. His face pinched and Thor grabbed his hip, meaning to throw him off, but his shove aborted. It steadied him. Loki keened at the angle, head lolling and cheeks flushed with fever. He grinned sickly. “So long, suddenly it’s the first time again.” Thor had no idea what he meant, what anything meant. Loki had never been out of sight long enough to do this with another man, nevermind the fact that he could hardly stand anyone else’s company. Something deep and ugly in Thor purred at the fact.

Loki sagged in his lap, expression pained but determined. “Needed this,” he hissed, dragging himself up, “I’ve needed this since I first watched you.”

“I told you to stop,” Thor said, not sure which time he was referring to. Loki smiled distantly, thrusts measured and numbing.

“You took yourself in your fist here, in our room, while you thought I slept.”

“We were _children,”_ Thor conceded, pleaded.

“I know.” Loki’s brow knotted. “I miss it. Miss being with you, sleeping with you. Bastard. Idiot. Try ignoring me now, hmm?”

Desperation took hold of his movements and he circled his hips, punctuating his pleasure with little gasps. Thor held him and stared up, the sight and sensations so confusing he was blind to anything else, and without him at the helm, his body took command.

“Fuck!” Loki gasped as he bucked. “Ooh _,_ I knew it, knew you wanted this.”

“I want you to be happy,” Thor whispered hoarsely.

His eyes shined and spilled and Loki flashed him a complicated glare. For once, it seemed he sympathized with Thor’s position: how impossible it was to have something as simple as a happy family when he dragged them down this path. Dragged him to his bed.

Between his strength and Loki’s cunning, it was clear who’d won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Thor saw in his broken expression that he knew he’d lost something between them, and it shifted his priorities as though he might actually care to play the reliable big brother. He sat still in Thor’s lap, drawing deep breaths, face twisting briefly with unconcealed misery. Before he could fight, Thor shoved him back and pinned him to the bed, forgetting himself entirely since this is normally where he would let Loki struggle himself asleep, or at least until he could speak rationally, but his cock drove deeper and Loki yelped in shock and barely-concealed pain. Give up.

_Surrender._

Little pleas fell from his lips as he ground up into Thor’s hips, seeking lost friction. Thor marveled at the bruises he’d left on such pale, perfect wrists with the sickening acknowledgement that they pleased him. Loki under him pleased him. He’d won the chase after all. He was his brother’s keeper, caretaker, his master, his king. Let Loki have his fantasies. If he couldn’t have his health, his happiness, his own future, Thor at least had Loki, himself. Or whatever pieces that had survived his shattering.

“You’ve wanted this,” he moaned regretfully, thrusting down and shaking. Loki quivered, too.

“Since you were born, since I knew we were together again, oh, _fuck!”_

“You disgust me.” He had never spoken to him like that. His brother’s voice broke on a moan. “Your disease is an illusion like any other lie you cling to.” He leaned close, biting at a tense shoulder and rolling his hips with all the strength he’d held back when dealing with his lunatic brother. "You would have others believe you broken, but nothing entertains you more than to prove wrong those who underestimate you.”

Loki laughed maniacally, “For you to understand after mere decades, when it’s taken millennia.” He nipped at Thor’s shoulder, eyes toxic, glittering. “You may be my favorite, so far.”

“Enough,” Thor growled.

He yanked Loki into his lap and purred as he tightened around his cock, thrusting up and hitting an angle that had his brother arching with a long, pretty gasp. He clambered at the arms holding him down, kicked at the sheets until Thor hefted up his legs with a pillow under his waist, driving deeper, encouraging him to clutch around him and for once, his brother obeyed. His brow drew up, mouth falling open in obscene bliss. Urgently rocking back, he sought as much pleasure as he could take, struggling to wrap a hand around himself as Thor easily fought him, conquered him, and Loki turned his head into the sheets with a mournful groan.

“You’re a bloody bastard,” he gritted between his teeth.

“Aye,” Thor rumbled in his ear, “and you’re a bastard’s harlot.”

Whether or not Loki liked that, his body responded ecstatically. He clenched and trembled and his breath came fast. Thor drove into him with abandon, forgetting himself as the bedsprings sang beneath them. Loki’s eyes opened wide.

“Let me go,” he whispered, beginning to tug at Thor’s hold. “Let me go now, you oaf!”

Another switch?

Thor whispered uneasily, “You wanted this, you said.”

Loki twitched, eyes flashing with fear before they hardened again. The transitions between his personalities could be startlingly quick. In the span of seconds, he was Thor’s prisoner, his husband, his brother, and what he settled on was not easy to trace. It was as though he were whole for just this moment, Thor marveled, glaring up in pleasure and agony as a single person, or at least a faction united. He never ceased tugging, ramping up his struggles, fear spiralling.

“You don’t understand, you imbecile, if they find out, _ah...”_ His eyes fluttered closed. A well-placed thrust shook a reluctant moan from his throat.

“Is that it?” Thor asked indulgently. “After they handed you to me, brother, and now that you’ve served yourself up?” He pulled at his thin waist, wondering at how Loki’s isolation left him so slight, so pale: light as a faerie and twice as mischievous, he noted with fondness and grief. The angle shifted. He buried his head in dark curls and breathed ravenously. “I love you, brother. I would keep you, take you far from here, to our own place, and have you every day,” he admitted, the fantasy pushing him to the edge. The body under him writhed in pleasure and misery. He held him close. _“Loki,_ I’ve loved you since the day my eyes first opened.”

Loki choked, grasping at his train of thought and tugging uselessly at Thor’s iron hold.

“If they… if they find out, they’ll never... _oh,_ they’ll take me away, Thor, _Thor._ Thor! GET OFF!” He screamed, thrashing ferally as the door opened, and Thor lifted his head to meet their father’s eyes.


End file.
